Second
only to the late Alan Rickman, Hicks could sneer for Britain if it
were an Olympic event. And sneering is a big part of what
Shakespeare's Richard does.

Hicks is also an excellent
speaker of
verse, and has a strong sense of where the humour lies, finding every
possible wry joke in the text.

The only thing missing in
his Richard
is the man's delight in his own villainy, the sense that he's having
real fun being so nasty. And that gap keeps Greg Hicks's excellent
Richard from being one of the greats.

For this modern dress
production, thankfully free of other anachronisms that too often
tempt directors, like rifles and cell phones, director Mehmet Ergan
and dramaturgs Jack Gamble and Jonathan Powell have intelligently
clarified and trimmed the text, cutting or combining some minor
characters and keeping the storyline clear and the play moving
forward.

Hicks and designer Anthony
Lamble have chosen an original
shape for Richard, with no humpback, but a hunched-over posture
driven by the chain by which he lifts and moves his dead left leg.
Not since Antony Sher's crutches three decades ago have I seen a
Richard who so resembled the spider everyone calls him.

But that lack
of self-love and self-entertainment does limit Hicks's portayal,
leaving us with the glummest Richard I've ever encountered, and
depriving us of the confusion and naughty delight of actually
enjoying watching him murder everyone who stands between him and the
throne (and a few more, just because they're there).

So, despite
being onstage almost continuously, Hicks doesn't completely dominate
the play as some other Richards have. And that's not entirely a bad
thing, since it leaves more room for others to make an
impression.

If
Georgina Rich's Anne is the cipher the character almost always is,
Jane Bertish is one of the strongest Queen Margarets I've ever
encountered.

Margaret has two big
scenes, one in which she curses
everyone in sight and one in which she catalogues her griefs, and
Bertish makes the first as deeply harrowing as the second is deeply
moving.

Peter Guinness makes
Buckingham a confident schemer who
discovers too late that he has been out of his depth from the
beginning, and Matthew Sim as Catesby creates an ominous presence
largely by being calmly present every time something bad
happens.

A
mixed bag, then, this Richard III has a lot to recommend it but
remains crippled by the absence of that one essential and sorely
missed element.